Modern society has found innumerable uses for laminated cards. Perhaps billions of such cards have been made for use as conference name tags, personal identification cards, gift tags, parking passes, playing cards, and so on. Other types of laminated cards include adhesive index tabs and hinging file folder tabs. Indeed, nearly everyone has a laminated card of some sort.
In the not so distant past, simple laminated cards such as club membership cards were made by hand. A secretary would typically insert a card into a typewriter and would type in relevant information such as the member's name and date of admission. After the member had signed the card, the secretary would place the card on a sheet of transparent plastic for forming the lamination assembly. The secretary would then fold the lamination over the card, press the lamination down to seal the card within the lamination, and cut the lamination about the card to remove any excess.
In the 1980's, dot matrix printers came into wide-spread use. Laminated card assemblies were developed for dot matrix printers to simplify the process of making a laminated card. A typical dot matrix laminated card assembly had tractor feed holes running along either side of the assembly so that it could be fed through the dot matrix printer. A lamination sheet was attached to a card on one side and had a thin backing on the other side. The dot matrix printer would print information on the back of the card, after which the secretary would remove the card from the printer, remove the backing from the lamination, and fold the lamination over the card. The secretary would then cut off the tractor feed holes with scissors, or tear off the strip of holes if perforation lines were provided for that purpose.
In the 1990's, laser printers and ink jet printers replaced dot matrix printers as the printers of choice. Such printers are capable of printing high resolution text and graphics at a high speed with very little noise. Unfortunately, the old tractor feed laminated card assemblies did not work well in laser printers and ink jet printers and photocopiers for at least two reasons. First, the tractor feed holes of the dot matrix assemblies caused the assemblies to jam in the laser printer or ink jet printer paper feed path. Second, the dot matrix laminated card assemblies tended to have non-uniform thickness across the width of the assembly. For instance, the half of the assembly having the lamination and backing might be 6.5 mils thick, while the adjoining half having the lamination and card might be 9 or more mils thick. This variation in thickness was a second reason why the assemblies would jam in laser printers.
Thus, there has been a very substantial need to develop an assembly for conveniently printing laminated cards in a laser printer, ink jet printer, photocopier or other printer requiring a substantially flat printing surface.
There has also been a substantial need to develop a general type of assembly which can be alternatively employed to create laminated identification cards, self-laminating hanging file folder tabs, and self-laminating adhesive index tabs. Each of these applications is related to the others in that they all involve a card which is laminated by a lamination member which folds over and seals the card. Conceptually, then, it would be of advantage to manufacturers of assemblies for printing in printers such as laser printers to be able to rely on a single type of assembly which can be utilized for a wide variety of applications relating to laminated cards.